


being alive

by Snickfic



Series: Author's Favorites [22]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Exhibitionism, F/F, Gladiators, Hate Sex, Pre-Canon, Sex Gladiators, The Grandmaster Made Them Do It, Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-09 23:06:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16458752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: The Grandmaster came down to see her himself. “Remember,” he began.“Kill ‘em or fuck ‘em,” 142 said.





	being alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



142 carefully fit the last piece of her armor over the obedience disk embedded in her shoulder. It buzzed at the touch. It buzzed near-constantly this close to a fight, a hum in her breast bone that matched the hum in her blood and in her—other places. She’d trained this body well, and it knew what was coming.

The Grandmaster came down to see her himself. “Remember,” he began.

“Kill ‘em or fuck ‘em,” 142 said.

“Or both,” he said, like he always did. “I’m telling you, that’d get you out of here, like, twice as fast. You can do them in either order,” he said hopefully.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” 142 said. “Who’s it this time?”

He wagged his finger at her. “Ah ah ah, that’d be cheating. Now you just go out there and do what you do, okay? I’m rooting for you.”

Routine. Usual. She was a favorite, therefore she got the Grandmaster’s good wishes before her matches. There was a chance she’d even gotten a little assistance in the ring, a time or two, courtesy of her opponent’s obedience disk. At one time in her life she’d have been pissed off about that. She’d take being alive, now. That was how far she’d fallen.

She walked into an arena roaring for her. Not as loudly as they roared for Bill, but he had that whole horse-headed cyborg, last-of-a-species shtick going on. Also a much better name. _Beta Ray Bill_ had a ring to it that _Captive 142_ just didn’t, according to the Grandmaster. He kept offering to rebrand her if she’d give him some material to work with. _You’ve got some spice in your past, I can just tell._ She kept declining.

So the arena roared for her as she walked out onto the painted sand of the battleground. The crowds chanted her number, and she lifted her battle axe and gave them a smile that instantly flashed in hologram far above her head, a hundred times larger than life. Their cheers buffeted her gently, a wave of sound like a warm salt sea. 

Beneath her feet came the rumble of the arena’s gates. They didn’t need to rumble; the Grandmaster just liked the effect. In the far wall, the first set of gates slid open, then the second, like the doubled eyelids of some vast concrete creature. In the void they left behind stood a figure, hardly taller than 142 herself, humanoid and slender. Empty-handed, which probably meant magic.

142 shifted her weight, grinding the heels of her boots into the hot sand. She gripped her shield a little tighter as the crowds stilled. The figure moved. The first strutted step was bewilderingly familiar; with the second one, 142 was sure. “Fucking fucking fuck.” 

Hela strode across the arena floor as if she’d already conquered it. Someone—the Grandmaster, of course it was him—had dressed her in silvers and grays and golds, a supple monochromatic armor that could, at a glance, have been that of a Valkyrie. The blue cape streamed behind her, just a few shades off true. 

“Damn him,” 142 said weakly. She couldn’t even find it in her to be surprised.

As Hela crossed the center of the arena, she drew two blades from the air in a single, smooth motion. Overhead, the great, shining, holographic avatar of the Grandmaster was crowing about the reunion of Valkyrie and foe. Look what he’d brought from a far-off corner of the universe, just to give his own Captive 142 some closure. It was just painful what this Valkyrie had done to his Captive 142, just painful.

Hela might have been wearing Valkyrie blue, but her eyes were smudged as dark as they’d ever been on the battlefield. About her head persisted the impression of antlers, though in truth she only wore a prosaic steel helmet. Her gaze was as steady and implacable as her stride.

She did not recognize 142, or she would been wearing a smile like poison. The Grandmaster hadn’t told her. That was something, at least. 

142 shifted her grip on her axe. The battle began.

Hela wasted no motion as she bore down on 142, swinging one blade (parried by 142’s axe) while thrusting with the other (caught just in time on 142’s shield). Hela’s mouth was twisted in a grimace that 142 didn’t recognize. Hela fought silently, intently, without any of her signature flare. When 142 caught Hela’s blade against the sand and shattered it, Hela drew another without missing a stride, skimming the edge along 142’s thigh just as 142 was sliding out of reach. First blood.

Hela did not even smile. In a flash 142 realized: Hela wasn’t just furious (though 142 knew the curl of that lip now). She was scared. Of some anonymous gladiator? Surely not.

The Grandmaster flickered into view once again above their heads, goading, and Hela flinched.

“You’re scared of him,” 142 said, the first words either of them had spoken. Hela’s eyes snapped to her face, promising immediate, gruesome death. 142 began to smile with a ferocious, wondering joy that ought to shame her, could she have still felt shame. “You’re _scared_ of him,” she repeated, and landed a solid blow to Hela’s shoulder, just breaking through the false armor. Her axe blade came away wet.

But she’d tipped the balance in Hela’s eyes towards fury. Hela smiled at last, not in triumph but in rage. “And what foe are you meant to be, little slave? What evil does Asgard vanquish this day?”

142 slipped outside the swing of Hela’s blade and echoed it with a swing of her axe, striking the armor at Hela’s hip. The armor absorbed the blow, barely, but Hela struggled to stay upright against the force of it. 

The Grandmaster had weakened her somehow, 142 thought. Or time had, but probably it was him. 

142 was a favorite of his. He liked doing things for his favorites.

Hela fought silent and desperate as 142 advanced on her. She drew new blades as the old ones were broken or struck from her grip, she landed a blow now and then, but it was clear the Grandmaster had crippled her before she’d even walked into the arena. Then Hela stumbled—unimaginable sight—and fell to the sand, and it was there for the taking, the revenge 142 had dreamed of and drunk for the hopelessness of and never thought to look for, it was there in one smooth swing of her axe across that snake’s throat, and she swung—

And fell spasming to the sound, shoulder afire like a lightning strike.

“Oh, that’s too bad, looks like our courageous 142 had some kind of attack. But that’s all right, we didn’t want the entertainment over too quickly, did we? And just look at them, 142 and this fiendish Valkyrie, just going at it. Really gets the blood pumping, doesn’t it, folks?” The crowd roared approval. 

The buzz of the obedience disk faded, and 142 pushed shakily to her feet, taking up her shield and axe from where they’d fallen, while Hela dragged herself out of the sand. When they’d both recovered, they stared across the few feet between them, weapons drawn. Realization bloomed in 142’s gut like nausea, like despair.

The Grandmaster’s favorites rarely lasted all that long. Their tenure was even shorter when they denied him his fun. “What did he promise you?” 142 asked.

Hela contemplated her a moment, eyes as cold and dead as the Void. “Freedom, of course, if I killed you.” And then that smirk, so familiar. “And you, Valkyrie? Oh, surely you didn’t think I wouldn’t recognize you. I’d know that training anywhere. What were you promised? Revenge?” She smiled now, inviting 142 to share it, like sharing a joke.

Parley was a luxury afforded to heroes. None of the Valkyrie had ever had much use for it. 142 struck, throwing Hela off-balance. 

Hela had her smile but not her full complement of blades; she had armor, after a fashion, but none of an Asgardian’s customary hardiness underneath. And this, her most important weakness: she thought she was still in a fight to the death. 

142 saw the fear in the whites of Hela’s eyes as she slammed Hela to the ground and knelt on her chest, a knee to her throat. Hela’s breath was heavy, and this close it was warm, as if she were a person and not a force of destruction. She glared up at 142, waiting for the killing blow, lips pressed shut against any temptation to cry mercy.

“He promised me I’d live another day,” 142 said. Then she shifted her weight, Hela’s eyes opening ever wider, and 142 bent and caught Hela’s mouth with hers. 

Hela stiffened in surprise, but only for a moment. “Whoring,” she mumbled against 142’s lips. “I didn’t expect that, even of you.”

142 slid her hand between Hela’s legs, past the loin cover, into the vee of her legs. There was a catch in the armor there, as 142 expected. Nearly all the Grandmaster’s armor was fitted with one. She slipped it open with a touch and slid her fingers inside the mesh, brushing them against Hela’s fevered skin. Hela was even warmer here, and wet—from battle or from fear? 142 didn’t give a damn. She knew her job now, and she’d do it. 

She stroked along the satiny skin of Hela’s clit. Hela shuddered, lips drawn back in a snarl.

142 wasn’t careful enough. One moment Hela was clenching against 142’s touch; the next she’d flipped them over and was lifting a new blade, ready to thrust it through 142’s throat.

She didn’t, of course. She fell backwards with a cry, the crackle of the obedience disk just audible underneath.

142 got to her feet once again. From the corner of her eye she saw herself overhead, two hundred feet tall. The Grandmaster always liked getting closeups when the real action started. “You’re not gonna kill me,” 142 said, stepping over Hela’s twitching body. She looked down at the woman between her feet, and her mouth stretched in what felt like a rictus grin. Was this triumph, of a kind? Did she even know what it felt like anymore? “You’re just entertainment. And people who don’t entertain the Grandmaster mostly end up dead.”

The buzzing quieted, and Hela fell limp, there between 142’s feet. She stared upwards, furious beyond the telling. Surely a goddess of death could transmute such rage into a blade, just by looking, but Hela was a much-diminished goddess, and she could only seethe as 142 straddled her again. The Grandmaster droned distantly from the loudspeakers. The sand ground under 142’s knees. Between her thighs, Hela’s breath rose and fell, as real as anyone’s.

She met 142’s eyes. “Well?” she challenged. “Do your worst, _Valkyrie_.”

142 leaned forward again, bracing a hand against the sand, and bit Hela’s lip. The taste of copper flooded 142’s mouth; this time _she’d_ drawn first blood. Hela snarled, snagged her fingers in 142’s hair, and brought her in for a deeper kiss.

Beyond them, all around them, the arena yelled its approval.

It was the battle all over again. They ripped the armor off each other piece by piece, neither pausing for gentleness. 142 kissed with teeth, biting Hela’s mouth even redder and drawing bruises from her skin. Hela wedged her thigh between 142’s legs, pressing until 142 gasped with the pleasure of it. She clawed lines down 142’s back and then rolled them both over so sand ground into the wounds. “Is this why you’re here, Valkyrie?” Hela asked. “You enjoy the pain? The humiliation?” She glanced pointedly overhead to where their doubles grappled.

“Do you?” 142 found Hela’s hot center and pressed in. Then she curled her fingers so that even a goddess could not keep from gasping. Hela arched against it, and the Grandmaster projected the smooth line of her back in holographic detail.

This was 142’s revenge, all that she would get of it: peeling back each layer of Hela’s smug certainty to display the woman underneath, pink and soft-skinned and fragile, like a crab out of its shell. She displayed Hela to these drunken spectators. At Hela’s every gasp and twitch, the crowd roared its appreciation. They knew 142’s work; they were primed to enjoy it. 142 twisted her fingers in Hela’s slick cunt and whispered, “Half the people in this stadium are fondling their dicks right now, or their tentacles, or their tail-flowers. All over you.” Then she dropped her mouth to Hela’s nipple, rosy and tender, and closed her teeth around it.

That was what it took. Hela clenched around 142’s fingers, hissing in a breath between her teeth. 142 worked her clit through the tremors, and then on, until Hela hissed again against the pressure on oversensitive skin.

Then 142 rolled off her and stood, dispassionate and as naked as the day she was born. Want still throbbed through her; she massaged herself, half for the crowd and half for herself, just to see. Often she let her opponent reciprocate, but then, usually she only fucked the ones she didn’t actively want to kill—ones she liked or could imagine feeling sorry for, if she were still capable of it.

She picked up her axe and hefted it, giving Hela a considering look, but she felt a buzz in her shoulder, barely a tickle, that warned her off trying that again. The fingers of her other hand were soaked with Hela’s and her own juices. While Hela watched, 142 brought them to her mouth and licked them clean; she hailed the crowd with them and at last the Grandmaster, high above in his special glassed-in box seat. 

Then she turned her back on the Goddess of Death and strode back across the sand towards the gates, rumbling open for her.

The Grandmaster sent for her just as the attendants had finished tut-tutting over her wounds. She grabbed a bottle of tar whiskey and a leg of gnarl for the ride up. “That was a nasty trick,” she said, as soon as the door slid open. She passed right by Topaz, who was as usual looking 142 like something she’d scraped off her shoe.

Put _her_ in the ring, see how long that sanctimony lasted.

“Oh, but it was so delicious. Totally worth a little minor deception, don’t you think? The crowd loved it. You really nailed that sex is war is sex vibe. So whaddya want to do with her?” he asked, without even a pause for breath.

“Are you going to let me kill her?” 142 asked.

“Eh,” the Grandmaster said, which meant no. “The options are more, free her or put her back where I found her. Otherwise I’m liable to get in trouble with your old boss. You know I don’t like making a ruckus.”

Hela, loose on the world once again. That’d cause more than enough _ruckus_. But 142 didn’t give a shit, did she? She hadn’t any reason to. She’d never get back to the world out there, and didn’t care to. And yet. 

Casually 142 said, “Did you think she was kind of disappointing? I mean she wasn’t much, for a goddess.”

The Grandmaster dismissed this with a gesture. “You Asgardians, you’re all god of this, goddess of that. Putting on airs. Kind of tasteless, in my opinion.”

“Exactly. I don’t really think she earned her freedom, do you?”

She held her breath for one beat, two, and then the Grandmaster grinned. “You know what, you’re absolutely right. This is why I keep you around, Captive 142.” He squeezed her shoulder. “And one of these days you’re not going to _be_ a captive anymore. A few more performances like tonight, boy howdy, just you wait.”

She’d wait. She’d wait forever. It wasn’t like she had other plans.

END


End file.
